748 FLIGHT, 9 November 1961
Passengers embark at London Heathrow on the inaugural BEA Vanguard
"VLF" (twopence-a-miie) night flight to Glasgow and Edinburgh on
November I. A note about the event is on page 745
AIR COMMERCE...
BRITISH UNITED'S REPORT: A POSTSCRIPTT
HE publication by British United Airways of its Report andAccounts, analysed in last week's issue, is a welcome inno-
vation in the history of British private aviation enterprise.
With so much evidence of airlines having over-equipped withnew jets the public is interested to know how this will affect them.
Will it mean an airline get-together to put fares up? Or will itmean many companies going out of business—and an even tighter
grip by the remaining companies through lATA's fare-fixingmachinery, and through pooling agreements ?
If the smaller private companies can operate at lower cost levelsthan the big flag lines, the public will not take kindly to fare levels
established by price-fixing organizations to protect the expensivepractices of the more lavish operators.
In the United Kingdom it had been hoped that a large part ofthe cut-and-thrust of the public hearings of the new Air Transport
Licensing Board would have been devoted to the open expositionof different economic theories. In the event, it seems to have been
accepted that the economics of air transport is a private matterbetween the operator and the Board. Operating cost and profit/
loss estimates are contained in private "submissions" to the Board.For example, BEA was prepared to tell the Board about the costing
of its new bargain-basement night fares to Scotland, providedthey remained confidential. What is the reason for this apparent
shyness ? The main interest of the public in ATLB hearings—tosee that under the new deal, they, the customers, are getting the
benefit of all the new opportunities offered by modern aircraft—isthwarted.
So any move that makes the public (which include passengers,politicians, financiers, manufacturers and so on) more know-
ledgeable in these respects is very welcome. The public has theright to full information about licensed public transport operators
—and this goes for the secret air operator's certificate too.
The pity is that British United, having decided to make itsaccounts public, did not present them in a way the ordinary citizen
can understand, and especially in a way which isolates the resultsof the public transport section of its activities. In his covering
letter the chairman, Mr Myles Wyatt, indicates that the reportwas being issued because "Airlines as a whole seem to dwell more
upon their losses ..." the implication being that BUA as an air-line operates profitably. The report is not precise on this point. It
merely shows that it is possible for private capital to invest in air
transport and allied aviation activities and make some profit.It indicates that diversification—geographical and operational—
enables setbacks in one part of the industry to be offset by wind-falls in another part.
Perhaps British United is now prepared to be much more specificabout its own airline results, so that the public can see whether
the practices leading to those results qualifies the airline to operateroutes in parallel with the corporations, and more economically.
There are a number of points that the airline could now clarifywithout giving away any secrets of its expertise in aircraft
operations.
For example, what profit or loss did its air transport operationscontribute to the results? Did Channel Air Bridge make money?
Did Straits Air Freight Express ? And it would be helpful if oper-ating costs were given, and broken down, and similarly revenues
for each category of operation. These, after all, are the kinds offigures which the Board is interested in, and the object of public
hearings is thwarted if companies are not prepared to accountpublicly for themselves, as every US carrier—4own to the smallest
"supplemental"—is required to do each quarter by the CAB.
In fact, the time has arrived when the Board should insist oncompanies' accounts being produced (including those of BO AC and
BEA) in standard form, as is done in the USA, with certain itemssuch as depreciation being on a formula basis. This would require
changes in the Companies Act; but laws which protect companiesunable adequately to finance public transport operations are not
good laws. Clearly, this does not apply to BUA.
Still, British United are to be commended on taking this unusualstep. It will be of inestimable benefit both to the industry and the
public if it leads to encouragement des autres.
BREVITIES
Bonanza Air Lines has taken up its option on a tenth Fairchild
F-27AAir-India has confirmed an order for two further Boeing 707-420s
to bring its fleet up to six. Deliveries will be made in March and Aprilnext year.
BEA is to resume services to Helsinki after a lapse of ten years.Comet 4Bs will operate four times a week to the Finnish capital, as an
extension of the non-stop London-Stockholm service, next April.
British Railways announce that a trip-wire device has been installedalong the boundary of Southend Airport to set signals at danger should
an aircraft overshoot the runway and block the line, as happenedlast year.
Mr J. R. Batt of Aviation Traders (Engineering) Ltd writes to correcta statement in Stanley Brogden's recent article "Australia's Domestic
Airline Operations" that Ansett has an engineering subsidiary in HongKong which has rights for Carvair conversions. All rights are at the
moment confined to Aviation Traders (Engineering) Ltd.
Sierra Leone Airways, which is managed by British United, is tobegin a new non-stop weekly Britannia service between London and
Freetown on November 16. Operations began with Twin Pioneers ondomestic routes last March. A Heron is to augment these services
this month.
BO AC is to introduce Boeing 707s on some eastern route services toHong Kong and Singapore "early next year." This will release Comets
for deployment on routes to West Africa. Comets will replace Britanniaschartered to Nigeria Airways on Lagos - London, and will also displace
Britannias on the London-Lagos route.
Information is now available from IATA about traffic in the peakNorth Atlantic season, i.e., during the third-quarter months of July,
August and September. Revenue passengers amounted to 690,722(90 per cent of them economy), an increase of only 3.1 per cent on the
corresponding period last year. At the same time the number of seatsoffered were increased by 34.8 per cent, causing load factor to fall by
16.1 points to 52.6 per cent.
Work is in hand on the extension of Nairobi Embakasi's mainrunway to 13,500ft. Work is expected to be completed before the end of
next year.
A Panair do Brasil DC-7C on a flight from Lisbon to Brazil crashedand caught fire on the approach to Recife on November 1. Of the 76
passengers and crew of nine on board, 48 are reported to have beenkilled. One report said that the survivors included two of the crew.
British United Airways Viscount G-AODH crash-landed during anILS approach monitored by GCA at Frankfurt Airport on October 30.
The aircraft was extensively damaged. A stewardess and a passengerwere injured. Commander of the aircraft was Capt D. A. Woolfe; the
aircraft was on a flight from Berlin to Frankfurt on a BEA charter.
Handley Page Herald 200 G-ARTC left Hum on November 6 on a12,000-mile, five-week demonstration tour of southern Europe, the
Near East and East Africa. Ten Handley Page staff led by Mr J. W.Allam were to be on board. Among the places to be visited are Rome.
Pescara and Taranto (for demonstrations to ALI Itavia), Ethiopia.Aden, Sudan, Cyprus, Jordan and Switzerland.
A Silver City Bristol 170 Freighter Mk 32, G-ANWL, overshot therunway at Guernsey while landing in fog on November 1, and crashed
three miles north-west of the airport. The airline's senior pilot, FtCapt G. Hogarth, and First Officer D. C. Evans were bath killed. The
seven passengers and the steward escaped serious injury. Three cars onboard the aircraft, which was on a flight from Cherbourg, were badly
damaged. This was Silver City's first accident in more than 250,397cross-Channel flights since 1948.
More than l,000,000hr have been recorded by Boeing jet airlinerssince the first 707 went into service with Pan American on October 26.
1958. Some 95 per cent of this total represents revenue hours. A totalof 29,421m passenger-miles have been flown by Boeing jets.
Pan American's 52 Boeing and Douglas jets have flown more thar240,000hr, and have carried almost 20m passengers, since
services began on October 26, 1958. Inflight engine failures have beerexperienced by PanAm once per 40,000hr and inflight shut-downs have
been necessary once every 5,000hr.